Daddy-O column: Will my daughter face the horrors of war?

by ojacques

21st Apr 2017 11:38 AM

AS A boy I remember imagining war from the sidelines, like an invisible spectator. The helicopters would fly overhead and rain destruction on those below - okay, so my visions of 1915 were not exactly historically accurate.

Nevertheless, I watched it in my mind's eye the way you watch Saving Private Ryan. Shocked but safe. As a teenager, I wondered how I would manage on the front lines of some foreign conflict.

Would I be a conscientious objector if there was a draft? Would I take up arms if, as in the Second World War, the theatre of war came to us?

Since then I've thought about now-departed Pop who fought the Japanese in Papua New Guinea, part of a force who kept the enemy from taking a major airfield in the Battle of Milne Bay.

Australian troops advance past the bogged Japanese light tanks at Milne Bay in 1942Australian War Memorial

The idea of this ordinary man, beloved by an ever-sprawling brood, having to kill or maim other men. How do you reconcile that with the greying man who doted on his grandkids and adored his jungle garden?

Now, to this new dad, Anzac Day brings new fears. The threat of war is no longer a worry just for those raising sons.

If that proportion of Australians ever took up arms again it would be a force of about two million going to war. And if it went the same way as The Great War, 288,000 wouldn't come home and about 750,000 would be wounded, gassed or taken prisoner.

Through that lens, this year I'll contemplate why those Australians died. They died fighting for a cause they believed was right, and they died to protect a homeland they thought was under threat.

I'll also cherish my daughter and hope that our fallen teach us to find every possible avenue before we again think about sacrificing our own.